Flawless
by Miss Scarlet
Summary: Flawless is everything they are not. This new experimental series delves into the lives of those who suffer. Beware of random and obscure pairings and occasional touches of shonen-ai.
1. Part 1: Yugi

Flawless

Miss Scarlet

Part 1: Yugi

We're a twisted bunch, aren't we? Each of us is. Flawed. Of course, everyone is flawed, aren't they? Something annoying, perhaps endearingly so, something wrong or broken or painful. A scar from the past. A bad habit, something lacking. It's inevitable, nobody's perfect. More or less.

Ah, forgive me, I'm not feeling myself tonight. The storm from this afternoon still has not let up, and the rain is beating at my window with a level of maliciousness I usually only associate with Bakura. It's so heavy, it's a wonder the sky could ever hold so much water. Sometimes when it rains like this it seeps in underneath the back door, forming a growing puddle of black water that I must mop furiously before Grandpa finds out and tries to sort everything out himself. I don't like him doing housework, not at his age. I'm not saying he's incapable, but obviously I want to protect him from harm. Screwed up though I may be, I still love my Grandpa.

Yami tells me that I'm not screwed up. Fair enough, I point out. I suppose it's perfectly normal to be communicating with a 5000 year-old Egyptian Pharaoh who just happens to reside inside your necklace? He can be easily won over, despite his 'King of Games' title. Sarcasm and a smug smile will do it every time, but then I suppose I do get special treatment.

So perhaps it's the weather that has sent me up to my room, to think. For want of anything better to do, I suppose. The puzzle is slightly warm, comfortingly so, and it's nice just to sit with it cradled between my palms, drawing in the heat and emotion from my other half. Nice isn't the word I'm looking for, but it will do. There just aren't the right words for some things, and describing our bond is one of them. I don't think I want to try. Trying to put words around our sentiments is like trapping them, encasing them in something rigid and immovable. But our relationship has been all about change, hasn't it? We've been so distant from each other, in the past. Supposing the wrong word had trapped us into that relationship? You as some psychotic possessor, a distant, superior spirit with a stern expression and your own take on what's right and wrong. myself being the meek little creature subjected to misery and control by my oppressor.

Imagine if we had stayed like that? I can feel his response to my thoughts. Sometimes we don't communicate using words. It's like we can send each other our feelings, or collections of them, little patchwork images of whatsoever we wish and to an outsider it would undoubtedly seem so random and meaningless, rather like a foreign student sitting down to his first Japanese lesson.

Right now he's telling me of secrets. He tells me what he notices in my friends, he sees them in ways I would never permit myself to. You'd be surprised. Yami tells me of warmth and love, and of course I reciprocate. And then he steels himself and shows me the troubles of my friends, of my enemies, of everyone I've ever met. He's good at reading people, I've noticed that ever since the duel with Panik, where he decided the man was a coward right from the outset and - what do you know - he was right.

Sometimes I wish Yami were wrong, but he never is. Sometimes I wish we could be nothing more than a group of happy, smiling teenagers, our only concerns being, oh, I don't know, math class and new trainers and being grounded and suchlike, where Anzu only fears running out of hair spray, where Ryou can be free from the blight he loves so dearly, where we can all be honest and open and really have nothing important to be honest and open about. Just be nice, normal, kids.

But life is the way it is, it's messed up, and each of us has our problems. And they won't ever go away. I can only sit back and watch them all, help them where I can, and think myself lucky that such an amazing group of people will allow me access to their lives. And my problems will go unmentioned, because how can I burden these struggling people with my own issues? 

Heh. Yami's heard me. He sends his love. Which is all I'll ever need.

---

__

The first time I heard anyone say 'I love you', it came from the mouth of the most important person in the world. He was right there, right next to me, saying those words unabashedly, with a confidence and strength I could only marvel at.

He wasn't talking to me.


	2. Part 2: Kaiba

Part 2: Kaiba

Seto Kaiba is...

A hunched figure over a desk. The clock reads one in the morning, but it has been placed face down so the annoying neon glare will not continue to remind him of the ticking seconds, the deadlines slipping ever closer, and other things falling further behind.

He doesn't like to think about those other things.

He has a million-and-one tasks ahead of him that night, and he knows that he has to attend school tomorrow, because that is what people do. That is what he'll do, and he'll get qualifications, the best, of course, and then he'll devote himself entirely to the running of the business. He knows this, in the same way he knows the sun will rise tomorrow, that grass is green, that the earth is round. People say that you cannot dictate your future, but he has his in an iron grip, and has already placed it on the tracks to success. All he has to do is follow through.

It doesn't bother him, not as such. He doesn't resent his workload, his job, or his position. He loves it.

His chest feels empty, his thoughts flat and dry. He needs a drink, a coffee perhaps. Whatever. It's not important. What is important is that he completes the data analysis for the new batch of prototypes, that he set up the agenda for the next meeting, that he goes through the applications and decides on who will be the lucky new Head of Marketing.

His eyes hurt, and his head is starting to ache. The light is perhaps a little too dim, but any brighter and it would make him feel uncomfortable, reminding him of what any normal person would be doing at this unhealthy, unfriendly hour. His lifeless gaze falls upon his computer. He blinks, once, twice, shakes his head slightly, dislodging ancient thoughts and feelings that don't quite fit with the Seto Kaiba Mindset, and leans over the keyboard. It has been this way for a long time. It will always be this way.

- 

Seto Kaiba is...

A raging lunatic. No, I mean it, he's frickin' crazy. Just look at him, standing there like he's this big powerful dictator, or a king, or _something_, I don't know. He's laughing, I don't know why. Not a chuckle, either, a full blown megalomaniac laugh, it's frightening to hear, if it was written down there'd probably be lots of 'Mwa's and 'Bwa's and suchlike and the whole thing just reeks of a confidence I can't even begin to fathom.

It's not as if anything funny has happened, anyway.

Just a duel, what's so funny about that? He seems so powerful, when he's standing up there. It all seems right, and fitting, as if it were carefully choreographed beforehand - he'd stand like _that_, legs akimbo, arms folded, then he'd move _there_, and toss his head that way, then he'd do _that_, and throw back his head and laugh like the freaky psycho that he is.

But I know this isn't choreographed because it's too natural. He certainly is in his element. It's like everything is set up just right for him. The duel disk that mirrors the sharp angles of his face and posture, the bony strength in his arms and legs, the wind that whips about him like an obedient servant, the trenchcoat that billows out behind him like an emperor's robes, the ominous black clouds that give him the perfect backdrop. it's as if nature herself is at his beck and call, there's nothing he can't control. I believe it now, standing here, facing him.

This world is his for the taking, it seems, if he hasn't already taken it. And so is this duel, though I suspect he'd had that won from the outset. I'm going to lose.

And he terrifies me.

- 

Seto Kaiba is...

A doting brother. Everyone says. Mokuba is his only weakness. Seto resents that, but what can he do?

The ride back in the helicopter was joyful, and fierce. Seto didn't care about anything else, not then, and he clutched his little brother to his chest tightly, his thin fingers grasping the cotton of Mokuba's jacket. He wouldn't ever let go. He wouldn't ever let anything happen to Mokuba, not again. His chest burned, his throat _hurt_, like it was being wrung out by a vicious washerwoman, and he felt sobs rising up inside his ribcage like unstoppable and horrible bubbles through tar.

"I'm sorry, Mokuba." The words were odd-sounding and choked, charged with so much emotion that they almost seemed to take on a life of their own.

"Big brother, please," Mokuba said with a half-smile, his voice muffled by Seto's chest. "It's not your fault. We're together now, it's over, we've won. We can go home."

"But I should have saved you. _I_ should have been the one. I was too weak." He didn't know if he was saying these things or thinking these things, but they were prickly in his mouth and their construction in his head set off a flow of sadness and misery, dousing the brightness in his heart and his eyes. "I failed you."

"Oh, stop it!" the child replied, a touch of exasperation seeping into his tone. "I'm just happy to be with you again, I don't care who made this happen, I'm only glad that it did! Can't you just forget about all that?"

"Yes, of course. I'll try to." No, I can't. I was too weak, I didn't save you. I don't deserve you. Seto Kaiba's fingers went slack, his head fell forwards onto his brother's shoulder, he screwed his eyes shut. 

Seto Kaiba hates himself.

-

Seto Kaiba is...

Very busy, so please, just go away. Don't you people realise I've got work to do?

---

__

Jealousy sounds like such a petty thing. It sounds like a silly little boy envying his friend's toys. But this kind of jealousy hurts. In a world where everything's new, the bad things just had to come and introduce themselves first, didn't they? Unwelcome visitors who won't leave despite the subtle hints I've been dropping.

---


End file.
